Cure Alzheimer's Fund Welcomes Two Prominent Scientists

Posted: Jul. 30, 2007

Caleb Finch, Ph.D. joins Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Finch is a professor of gerontology and biological sciences with adjunct appointments in the Department of Psychology, the Department of Physiology and the Department of Neurology at the University of Southern California. Dr. Finch’s major research interest is the study of genomic controls of mammalian development and aging.

Caleb Finch, Ph.D.

He received his undergraduate degree in 1961 from Yale, where he majored in biophysics. He continued his work in cell biology and received his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1969. Dr. Finch has received many of the major awards in biomedical gerontology, including the Robert W. Kleemeier Award of the Gerontological Society of America in 1985, the Sandoz Premier Prize by the International Geriatric Association in 1995, the Irving Wright Award of AFAR and the Research Award of AGE in 1999. He has directed the National Institute on Aging-funded Alzheimer Disease Research Center since 1984. He is a member of 10 editorial boards.

Dr. Finch has written more than 450 articles. In 1990, he published a major intellectual synthesis of aging, Longevity, Senescence, and the Genome. In 1995, Dr. Finch and Robert Ricklefs published Aging: A Natural History (Scientific American Library Series) for the general public; translated into five languages. He co-authored with Thomas Kirkwood, Chance, Development, and Aging (Oxford: 2000). His latest book, The Biology of Human Longevity: Inflammation, Nutrition, and Aging in the Evolution of Lifespans, was published in July 2007.

Sam Gandy, M.D., Ph.D. joins Research Consortium

Sam Gandy, M.D., Ph.D., is Sinai Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research, Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, and Associate Director of the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, and Chair, National Medical and Scientific Advisory Council of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Caleb Finch, Ph.D.

Dr. Gandy is an international expert in the metabolism of the sticky substance called amyloid that clogs the brain in patients with Alzheimer’s. In 1989, Gandy and his team discovered the first drugs that could lower formation of amyloid. Dr. Gandy has written more than 150 original papers, chapters and reviews on this topic. Dr. Gandy has received continuous NIH funding for his research on amyloid metabolism since 1986. In work that is being prepared for publication and that forms the basis for his nomination to the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Consortium, Dr. Gandy and his colleague, Dr. Michelle Ehrlich (Professor of Neurology, Pediatrics, and Genetics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine) have created a highly novel transgenic mouse that accumulates Aβ oligomers in the brain and develops memory problems but never develops amyloid “plaques” during its entire lifetime.

Dr. Gandy received his M.D. and Ph.D. at the Medical University of South Carolina. He did his postgraduate work at the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and Cornell University Medical College. Dr. Gandy completed his post doctorate at The Rockefeller University, where he was appointed assistant professor in the laboratory of Paul Greengard, 2000 Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Gandy was appointed associate professor of neurology and neurosciences at Cornell University Medical College in 1992. In 1997, he moved to New York University where he served as professor of psychiatry and cell biology until his appointment as Paul C. Brucker, M.D., Professor of Neuroscience at Jefferson Medical College and Director of the Farber Institute for Neurosciences in 2001. In July, 2007, he assumed his current post as Sinai Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.